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By Katy Migiro
Nairobi — Almost 7,000 Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers have been illegally sent home by Israel over the last 18 months, and some have been tortured and charged with treason on their return, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday.
Israel has tightened up its restrictive asylum policy since December to put pressure on some 50,000 African asylum seekers, who it labels “infiltrators”, to leave the country.
Seven Sudanese sent home from Israel told HRW they were detained and interrogated on return to the capital, Khartoum. One was tortured, a second put in solitary confinement and a third charged with treason for visiting Israel, regarded as an enemy state.
“They beat me with big sticks and poured boiling water over me and gave me electric shocks,” a 36-year-old Sudanese man from Darfur, who was arrested at Khartoum airport on arrival from Israel, told the human rights organisation.
“They (National Security Intelligence) shouted abuse at me, saying I was against the government because I was from Darfur and had been to Israel.”
He was held for four months before being charged with treason. Under Sudanese law, Sudanese who visit an enemy state may be sentenced to 10 years in jail.
PROTECT THE JEWISH MAJORITY
Israel, seeing a demographic threat to its Jewish majority, has branded the majority of Eritreans and Sudanese who have entered the country across the Egyptian border since 2006 as illegal job-seekers who must not stay.
Describing African asylum seekers as “infiltrators”, the then Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai said in 2011 that he intended to “make their lives miserable” to force them to leave and “protect the Jewish majority”.
The term infiltrators was originally used in the 1950s to describe Palestinians who tried to cross into Israeli-controlled territory.
In 2012, parliament ruled that the Israeli authorities could indefinitely detain anyone entering Israel irregularly, that is, not through an official border crossing. A five-metre-high steel fence was built to seal off the 240 km (150 mile) border with Egypt.
When Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in September 2013 that detention of asylum seekers was unlawful, parliament passed new legislation requiring Eritrean and Sudanese “infiltrators” to be held in “residency centres”, such as Holot in the Negev desert.
“Holot is a detention centre in all but name,” the HRW report said. “Israel’s Defence Ministry built the centre. The Israeli Prison Service guards it. A four-metre-high fence surrounds the centre.”
The centre’s 2,000 “residents” must report three times a day and must be inside the centre between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., it said.
“Eritreans and Sudanese are left with no choice but lifelong detention in Israel or returning to a country where they risk persecution or other serious harm,” HRW said.
Thousands of African asylum seekers face arrest because they have been unable to renew permits legalising their presence in Israel.
In December, 20 of the 24 interior ministry offices for renewing permits were shut down and the opening hours of those still functioning were reduced from five days to five hours per week.
Interviewees told HRW they had to wait for several days to reach the front of the queue, while officials walked up and down the line telling them to leave Israel.
Israel has recognised fewer than 200 people as refugees since its creation in 1948, according to the African Refugee Development Centre.
Globally, 83 percent of Eritrean and 67 percent of Sudanese asylum seekers gained recognition of their status in 2013, yet Israel has rejected 99.9 percent of Eritrean and Sudanese claims, HRW said.
The director of the Interior Ministry’s Population, Immigration and Border Authority, Amnon Ben Ami, did not respond to a request for comment.
Editing by Tim Pearce; timothy.pearce@thomsonreuters.com
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